Mystery Springs
by ClarkyDee
Summary: AU. Dipper and Mabel have been sent to spend their winter break at their grunkle Stan's tourist trap, Mystery Springs, a 'healing hot spring' in the mountains of Oregon. Once there, the Pines twins discover a mystery involving a creature living in the uncharted wilderness. ONE SHOT, maybe more.


"Oh boy. Is this the place?" Dipper asked his twin sister. He was frowning as he surveyed their surroundings.

"It's so…" Mabel began.

"Crummy?" Dipper offered. The bus began driving away, spraying up a loose mix of slush and mud that coated the twins as they stood by the roadside. _That's it then,_ Dipper thought sullenly, _we're gonna be stranded up here in the mountains. First we'll freeze and then some kinda animal will eat us._

"Whatcha thinkin' about Dipping Sauce?" Mabel poked her brother in the cheek, warping his frown into a sillier expression.

"Oh nothing," Dipper answered with a shiver. His parents had sent them both to stay with their grunkle Stan over the Christmas holidays at his tourist trap, _Mystery Springs,_ high in the Oregon mountains. The trouble was the eponymous 'springs' were more like a single pool sized crater filled with steaming water, a bunkhouse for patrons, and a shack that doubled as both the manager's office and Stan's living quarters.

"Missing the California sun already?" Mabel teased. "Aren't you excited?!" she was off on another one of her rants and Dipper listened with a small smile on his lips. "I mean, serious! This is gonna be our first Christmas break where there'll be actual snow. Snow, Dipper!" she reached down and took up two handfuls for effect. "If every Christmas special in history is to be believed, this right here," she held up the snow in triumph, "this is the key to the greatest Christmas vacation ever!"

"Well…" Dipper shrugged, "I guess it would be kind of fun to build a snowman, or try skiing, or…"

"Snowball fight!" Mabel screamed, tossing the handfuls at Dipper. They struck him in the face with a wet thud and a huge chunk of slush fell down the front of his blue parka. The scream that came next was decidedly girly and Dipper's face was red as he dug snow out of the front of his shirt ineffectively with his clumsy mitts.

"Or snowball fight…" Dipper said through gritted, chattering teeth. It was then that a gong sounded from the manager's office and a sudden flurry of snow blocked the twins' vision. After a moment the flurry died down and standing before them was an old man wearing a dark brown parka and a dark red toque with a tiny golden fish emblem on the front. He made a theatrical pose and gave them both his best winning smile.

"Hey there kids," he began, "It's me! You're dear grunkle Stan!"

"Grunkle Stan!" they shouted in unison as they ran to him and hugged him around the waist.

"Hey, hey, watch the snowsuit," Stan chastised them but as soon as they looked up at him he softened, "ah jeez. You kids." He ruffled each of their hair with one hand. "I haven't seen you since you were ten. Now you must be...what, like eighteen?"

"Grunkle Stan!" Mabel exclaimed, "we're twelve!"

"Oh great," Stan frowned, "then by state law you aren't allowed to operate the snowplow." He gestured over his shoulder at an old, broken down machine the size of a golf cart. "Although…" he paused for a moment in thought, "What was it I told you kids?"

"Always brush behind your ears?" Mabel offered.

"Never trust places with names like 'Mystery Springs'?" Dipper countered.

"No, no," Stan scolded, "I taught you that 'it's legal as long as there are no police around'!" He led them towards the manager's office. "Now which one of you knows how to drive manual transmission?"

* * *

"Do you think the snow ever melts up here?" Dipper asked as the twins wandered around the forest near the hot springs.

"I don't know," Mabel answered, scoping up a handful of snow and eating it. "Taste's pretty old to me."

"Gross," Dipper chuckled. "I wonder how far this forest goes…" Mabel shrugged, her mouth still full of snow. "I'm going to find out," Dipper said as he began climbing a nearby tree.

He tried to pull himself up but his thick mitts made that impossible. He considered his options for a moment before taking his mitts off and scaling the tree. It was freezing but his curiosity propelled him forward. After a few painful minutes, Dipper pulled himself up onto a high up branch.

"Whoa," he said breathlessly.

"What is it?" Mabel called up from the ground.

"It goes on forever…" Dipper wasn't exaggerating. The dense Oregon wilderness extended as far as he could see in every direction. He would have taken more time to take in the spectacular view but something caught his attention. Somewhere nearby there was a disturbance. Some winter birds took off as a thicket of tall pines swayed violently for a moment before becoming still again. Then there was a loud thump that nearly sent Dipper falling from his perch.

"What was that?" Mabel called up with concern.

"I have no idea," Dipper's face was a mask of determination and excitement, "but we're going to find out!" He swung himself down from the branch he had been sitting on and quickly scaled back down the tree, using his mitts to slide down the smooth, frozen bark.

Moments later the Pines twins were running through the snow covered woods towards the source of the mysterious sound. Dipper's heart was pounding in his chest. _Could this be,_ he silently hoped, _a real mystery?_

"Slow down doofus," Mabel teased, ducking under a frozen branch as they ran. "It was probably just a woodpecker or a beaver or something."

"Definately not," Dipper was convinced now, the roots of a theory already taking hold in his head. "There is nothing in this forest that could have made a racket like that."

After a few minutes of harrowing chase, the twins emerged in a clearing. _No,_ Dipper's mind raced to grasp something, _this isn't a clearing at all._ He surveyed the trees nearby that had had their bark torn off and the huge set of tracks leading away from the area they were standing in. It was obvious that something had cleared this particular area of vegetation as it had moved through. That something must have been massive.

"Whoa," Mabel exclaimed as she stopped beside her brother. "What do you think did all this…"

"I don't know," Dipper said with a smile on his face, "but before this vacation is over, we are gonna find out!"

 **THE END.**

 **Author's Notes:**

Hi folks! So I've just recently started watching _Gravity Falls_ and I am loving it! The characters are amazing (especially the Pines family) and the show is both heartwarming and hilarious! So naturally the next step would be to write a fanfic and here it is.

I had the idea of an alternate version of the show that took place over the winter break instead of the summer and I thought it would be a _cool_ (get it? :P) idea so I just sat down and wrote it.

If anybody has any interest in me continuing the story about the mysterious forest creature, let me know and I shall do it! :D also please leave a review and tell me what you liked, disliked, and think I should have done differently! I love hearing from everyone and I try my best to answer every review :)


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